Trash Bandit

The garbage truck stopped by a few minutes ago, so I went outside to roll the standard-issue trash can back into the garage. In the process of checking to ensure that the can was empty, I discovered some unexpected new trash in it that hadn’t been there just two hours prior when I checked to see if the trash truck had arrived yet. It was a yellow plastic Best Buy bag. Tied shut. Random junk inside.

It’s like the fourth or fifth time this has happened. Someone I call the “Trash Bandit” routinely deposits what I call “aftertouch trash” in our can, so named because it always appears there after the garbage truck has emptied out everything we put there. The aftertouch trash always consists of a random plastic bag full of random junk, usually household crap, although one time it was a Taco Bell bag full of used wrappers and an empty drink cup.

I have my suspicions of who it is. Namely, the really old man who lives across the street. The reason? Once, the aftertouch trash bag was full of discarded junk mail and envelopes, and the address on all of it belonged to his house. What I can’t figure out is why. The old dude’s got the same county-issue trash can that we all have. He puts it out, full of his own garbage, every week. It’s like some bizarro pathology drives him to save an extra little bag of special goodies just for me, wait until the garbage truck makes its rounds, and then throw it in my empty garbage can like a macabre offertory.

Today, though, there was very little time elapsed between when the garbage truck drove by and when I found today’s mystery package. I’m starting to think that maybe the trash truck goes down his side of the street first, spills shit all over the road, and then when they come back up our side of the street and get to our house, the garbage men pick up the spillage and toss it in our can…after they empty it. Which would be an even greater stupidity, in my estimation, but what’re ya gonna do.

One of these days, I’m gonna be the Smokey to this trash’s Bandit. Quoth Sheriff Buford T. Justice, “I’m gonna barbeque your ass in molasses.”